Tony DeMarco

Tony DeMarco, the North End’s welterweight boxer beloved by West Enders during the 1950s, passed away on Monday, October 11, 2021 at Mass General Hospital, as a West End resident. 

Tony DeMarco was born Leonardo Liotta on January 14, 1932 to Vincenzo and Giacomina Liotta, two Italian immigrants from Sicily. Vincenzo owned a shoe repair shop on Dartmouth St. in the Back Bay, and the family lived in Boston’s North End on 10 Fleet Street. Fleet Street was very close to the Boston Garden, which opened in the West End in November 1928. The Garden was originally built for boxing, as it was created by Tex Rickard, the boxing promoter who designed Madison Square Garden in New York City. Liotta picked up boxing when he was eleven years old, winning the Massachusetts boys’ championship for 100-pounders in 1943. Once he was 15, Liotta was sparring against professional boxers in the area and decided to go pro himself. He was not the requisite age of eighteen, but he took the identity of a close friend, an eighteen year old named Tony DeMarco. Liotta, now “Tony DeMarco” himself, also convinced his local priest to create a fake baptismal certificate for him on the pretense of getting a job. Ironically, the original Tony DeMarco wanted to become a professional boxer as well, but the new Tony would not let him take the name back. The original Tony boxed as Michael Termini, the name of another friend; when the original Michael Termini became a fighter as well, he took his brother’s name. 

DeMarco became a pro in October 1948, at the age of 16, and earned well-deserved local fame for his early fights against lightweights and welterweights. DeMarco was known for being an energetic puncher who crowded opponents with power, not finesse. Boston sports writer Dave Egan remarked that DeMarco was “so remarkably popular not because he’s the greatest prizefighter in the world, which he isn’t, but because he’s so damned courageous.” On April 1, 1955, DeMarco won the world welterweight championship in a title bout against Johnny Saxton at the Boston Garden. DeMarco knocked Saxton onto the ropes with a two-handed blow, and the referee stopped the match in the 14th round. Rip Valenti, DeMarco’s manager, remembers that DeMarco, the night of his momentous victory, “walked from Fleet Street to the Garden, then walked back home to the North End, carrying the belt.” DeMarco only held onto the championship for ten weeks, however, in an era when professional boxers regularly fought multiple times a year. Carmen Basilio defeated DeMarco for the welterweight belt, on June 10, 1955, in twelve rounds at the War Memorial Auditorium in Syracuse, New York. 

On November 30, 1955, DeMarco and Basilio had an epic rematch at the Boston Garden that Ring magazine called the “Fight of the Year.” DeMarco was ahead in the fight after eight rounds, but was knocked down, unable to get up, by the twelfth round. He recalled his pride at participating in a fight that went down as potentially the greatest welterweight fight in history: 

I have to go along with people who say it was the greatest welterweight fight ever. I’d love to say, `No, it was the night I beat Saxton for the title,’ because for me that was the greatest moment of my career, but it wasn’t. That Basilio fight was. I didn’t win that night but they said it was the Fight of the Year and some people say it was the Fight of the Century. How many guys are part of a Fight of the Year? I have to be grateful for that.

After the loss, DeMarco continued his impressive boxing career until retiring in 1962. His last fight was on February 6, 1962 at the Boston Garden, against the Hungarian boxer Stefan Redl whom he defeated in ten rounds.

DeMarco had many fans in the West End in addition to the North End. On January 20, 1954, the West End House Alumni invited DeMarco to be an honored guest at the first annual “sports breakfast” of the West End House, at 16 Blossom Street. Other guests that year included Red Sox legend Johnny Pesky, Boston Celtics head coach Red Auerbach, and sportscaster Curt Gowdy. The West End House held its second annual sports breakfast in 1955, and DeMarco was again a head table guest alongside notables including Red Sox center fielder Jim Piersall. 

In 1998, the City of Boston honored DeMarco by renaming the corner of Hanover Street and Fleet Street as “Tony DeMarco Way.” In October 2012, the city had also erected a statue of Tony DeMarco in the North End, created by sculptor Harry Weber.

DeMarco passed away on October 11th, 2021 as a resident of the West End and an upstairs neighbor of The West End Museum.